Rollercoaster of emotions

 

Anyone else go through a series of emotions for no reason?

Today, when I woke up, I was done.

Didn't want to lift a finger. Could easily have spent the day in bed napping and scrolling TikTok. It felt like I'd forgotten to take my anti-depressants, but that wasn't the case, I've taken them every day since Tuesday.

Since my book launched earlier this week, I've been pushing hard on the promotion.  I've sent out about forty packages to targeted individuals with presents in telling them about the book, I've been doing lots on social media, and I've contacted four hundred libraries to suggest that they buy the book.

As of yesterday, I was on six sales.

Now, there's so much against me. A new author, selling a book in an unclear genre (not a nice definable one like thriller or romance), a collection of short stories instead of a novel, self-published, without  proper marketing, an agent, or big social media presence, has a likelihood of major success of under 1%.  Selling a hundred copies has a maximum likelihood of 10%.

And I didn't write the book to be a massive success - although that would be nice, of course, who doesn't want to earn millions from a book they've published and have a mansion with several staff? (especially a gardener.... not a fan of the outdoors lol).  I wrote it because I've always wanted to publish a book, and the stories in it I like.  Even though I wrote them, they make me laugh.

But still.  When I woke up - depression was significant.

That feeling faded when I received a nice email from one of the libraries I'd contacted, saying that it wasn't a fit for their library (being medical in nature), but they was going to suggest it to another library on campus.  I chilled on Minecraft for a couple of hours, and felt pretty good after that.  And I checked my stats and found I was up to eight sales!

So then this afternoon I went out, and came back, listless and apathetic despite it being spring and there being some actual sunshine around.

And now I'm feeling good - I've had a decent dinner, I've made some more promotional videos, I'm now feeling like I've actually had quite a good day. And I'm on leave tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that.

Sometimes, with having mental health stuff going on, I forget that it's actually an issue.  Some days I'm powering through all sorts of challenges and tasks, and feeling perfectly fine, and I think it's not a thing any more.

And then some days, like today, you have a spell where you feel like everything is wrong, and there's no rhyme or reason behind it.

But now I'm feeling better :) and I'm very lucky to have this platform to vent on (and those who know me well, I am so very happy to have you in my life - I wouldn't be here without numerous people who have helped me and continue to help me)

Finally - If you haven't already.... buy my book! https://amzn.to/3XBVH1z

Really annoyed

 I'm really annoyed at myself.

I had a plan for publishing and promoting my book ("Norman the Insurance Salesman and Other Stories" - catchy, I know!), which was to make it live at the start of May, and before that I'd send advance readers copy to my targeted list of awesome people, and hopefully that would result in some reviews and some promotion to try to kickstart sales.

All that changed when the other day I clicked Publish on the eBook instead of scheduling it first.

The issue with this is that Kindle don't (understandably) allow you to distribute your eBooks outside of the Kindle Store and Amazon if you're signed up to their Kindle Select programme - which I am.  So while I can still tell people about the book, and give them copies of the sample pages Amazon put on their website, I can't send anyone the full book in electronic format.

I could buy physical copies and post them, but that's an outlay I can't afford right now.  So the reality is that I'm not going to be getting the reviews and the buzz that I was hoping for.

It's bittersweet - I'm really annoyed at myself, because it's my mistake, but also I'm really excited to have my book out live - except it isn't fully live, because of me trying to fix my mistake, the eBook is now back in review status and not actually purchasable, while the paperback and hardback copies are (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0F2884VMF) so I'm now waiting until the eBook is back fully live too and then I can do my promotion. Effectively I'm doing a "soft launch", which in my experience is when someone logical tries to do marketing - and it doesn't work. But I'm hoping that I'm wrong!

It's still fun. Writing a book is something I've always wanted to do, and it feels great to have done it. It's just not how I was hoping it would go! But that's life for you I guess :)

Anyway - expect to continue to hear from me more book-related stuff!

Writing a book

 So, I've been writing a book.

To be honest, I'm hoping it's kind of there.  I've printed out a couple of copies of first drafts for people to give their feedback on, and I'm sure there will be a bit of refinement but I hope it's somewhere near ready for me to work on.

Now, obviously, I have a vision, and that's me on a stage at a book festival (probably at Hay-on-Wye) being interviewed by someone, lots of people sat listening, while we take part in an interesting and funny discussion.  I love making people laugh.

I have tried over the years to write a book.  And I understand the formula for writing a successful book.

The successful book is a novel, with a twist, a good plot, relatable characters, all that good stuff, fascinating detail, maybe some excitement.  I understand that.

But I can't write that.

I lose my train of thought far too quickly, at most I write a chapter and then it peters out.  My Google Drive is full of abandoned stories.

Short stories don't sell.  Any website that advises people trying to make it as an author tells you that.  Especially not "flash fiction" which I thought was stories that were fifty words or so, but apparently stories as long as 750 words can be flash fiction, and that's what I tend to write, most of my stories are short.  They're a few pages.  To be honest, they're the right length for when you're on the toilet.

Also, my book isn't long enough.  Books should be over 60,000 words.  I'm not there. I'm around 17,500 words.

So, I know my book isn't going to sell.  Furthermore, it's in fairly bad taste.  A lot of the stories have a lot of death and/or sex in it, they're silly, and sensibilities are offended by them.

But I like them.

I have one qualification for the story to make it into the book - and that is that it should make me laugh.  If I'm not smiling when I read it back, it's not going in (and there's a stack of stories I wrote that haven't made it into the book because of that).

I've also been careful with some of the stories to try to ensure that there isn't gender bias or shit like that.  People can be great, nice, lovely, alright, annoying, and outright dicks.  And they can vary between these (I know I do).  Your race, gender, religion, whatever other qualities, don't matter.  They don't affect your behaviour. Your behaviour affects your behaviour.

Beyond that, there's few limits.  There's a story about a being from Norse mythology.  There's a story about Alan the Demon.  And there's a story about Norman the Insurance Salesman.

So anyway, the book is coming.  I expect that it will sell very few copies, mostly to my closest friends and family who feel like they ought to buy a copy. I'm sure that it won't get anywhere and that I won't be interviewed on a stage or win any prizes, but it's coming.

The Relaunch of the blog

Hello!

I vaguely remember doing this blogging thing. I used to do it quite a lot, in fact.  Good for stretching the writing muscles.

Why did I stop?  I''m struggling to remember, to be honest.  I think I was finding that I didn't really have anything to write about, and neither did I have the urge.

That is changing!

I'm working on a book.  Now ideally, what I would like is for an agent to contact me out of the blue (via email, no one wants a phone call), tell me how amazing I am, and to set me up with a huge publisher who would give me a six-figure advance for a book of whatever length and quality I decide to churn out.  Unbelievably, this has not happened to date!

I'm working on a collection of short stories.  The stories vary in length and topic, but have one common element.

Immature humour.  Crude, you could call it.  And again, no matter how hard I search on literary agents websites, none of them seem to be looking for this.  Nevertheless, the success of games such as Cards Against Humanity and Joking Hazard (both of which I love) makes me feel that there is an audience out there somewhere.

So, I'm going to try to bring this old blog back to life with the shameless aim of building an audience of bloodythirsty billionaires desperate for a book stuffed full of with stories such as "Charles, the dog that couldn't stop licking" and "Chantelle the Juicy Sausage".

Hopefully it'll become a stocking filler for that relative with questionable taste you have (and if you don't have a relative with questionable taste, it's you)

Bookshops, Books, and their Awesomeness

Today apparently it's Bookshop Day (so Twitter tells me, anyway), which gives me a perfect opportunity to blog about one of my favourite things - books!

I've always loved reading. Being a geek, as a kid I would not only read the huge pile of Peanuts cartoon books my parents had in the house, but then went on to count how many times various characters appeared in the books and then create graphs based on the data (spoiler - Snoopy wins. By far.)

Robin Hood's Bay, which is one of my families' favourite places to visit (do check out the video from the holiday I and my dad had there), used to have a brilliant bookshop called the Chapel bookshop - large, with various rooms, nooks and crannies, you could easily spend hours there hunting through dusty piles of books that quite possibly hadn't been read by anyone for years. The downside of Amazon (and I am a big user of Amazon, it is great for getting stuff you need) is that it tells you what is most popular, the bestsellers, and the things that you typically like, but doesn't necessarily show you things that you wouldn't normally consider.

Several times I've seriously considered buying a Kindle, because logically it makes perfect sense. Rather than having, as we do currently, a couple of walls in the house full of books, I can store them all on one easy to carry e-reader that I can take and use anywhere. But there's just something about the physical presence of a book, the weight of it in your hand, flipping pages, sticking a bookmark (or in my case a scrap of paper) in to track your position. Plus the cost difference between an e-book and a paper book isn't big enough for me to justify buying a Kindle.

And, of course, there's so many books that you can't get on a Kindle. For example, I happen to own a hardback copy of "Hello Sailor" by former Python Eric Idle, a quite rude and slightly bizarre story which doesn't make a great deal of sense but is funny nevertheless. From the 1970s, there's almost no chance of that appearing as an e-book any time soon.

Take a look at a sample of my books:

Hello Sailor is at the end on the right. Told you I had it.

There's a lot of science fiction and what you might consider to be typically geeky books there, but I've found, particularly as I work on writing my own books, the value and enjoyment of reading different genres. A good example of this is Adele Archer's International Relations trilogy, the first of which to be quite honest I only bought because I'm a big fan of Adele's blog.  I found myself engrossed in the story, and was surprised at how my emotions were affected by the story - getting angry at one of the lead characters part way through at their actions!

Right now I'm reading "Laura's Handmade Life", a novel which I probably wouldn't have ever considered reading before experiencing Adele's work, and all I can say is, to me, it makes sense to try new things, whether it be some crazy and exciting new hobby, or simply reading a book that you wouldn't normally try.

So, it's Bookshop Day. This seems like a good reason for you to pop out and support your local book store.  Off you go then :)

A Call To Action

So, I'm working on a book at the moment.  It's all at very early stages, and comes with a hefty proviso of "may never see the light of day" but at this time it's all very exciting, particularly how it gives me another reason to avoid doing unimportant things like doing the washing up or getting a shave.

I need your help.

Except you, Dr Dawg.

Specifically with blog subscriptions!  I will be approaching writing agents in the not too far distant future and part of my sales pitch will be talking about my blog.  I'm aware that there are a committed number of people (thank you, each and every one of you) who do stop by regularly to check out my blog, most people don't currently subscribe, which is absolutely fine of course, nevertheless I'd like just to flag up that if you would like to subscribe you'd be very welcome :) I don't tend to post that frequently so hopefully it shouldn't result in a sea of notifications for you.

If you would like to subscribe then on the right hand side of the page (if you're viewing this on a proper desktop computer that is) there should be options to subscribe by email or to subscribe using an RSS reader, if you use one of these. If you're viewing this blog on a phone or tablet, as about half of people do, if you scroll right down to the bottom of the page there should be an option to "View Web Version" - if you could just do this this one time then the links will be available on the right hand side for you to subscribe.

If, by chance, you've stumbled across this blog and this is your first time, here's a post for you to check out, you'll get an idea of my typical nonsense.

Many thanks to all that do indeed subscribe :)

Now, back to thinking up insults relating to that Ohioan master of blogging, Tim Clark. He's a great man but his dog...

Well to be quite frank, I think his dog is a little out of control.  It's awarded itself a doctorate, tried to become President, I think it's suffering from delusions of grandeur. I think Tim needs to take Dr Dawg to the vet for some sort of procedure, perhaps to be neutered. I don't know if it would make any difference but, for the sake of humanity, it's worth a try.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Bowling

Did you know that automated bowling alleys were invented in 1936?  Gottfried Schmidt invented the mechanical pinsetter back before the second World War - prior to this people were employed to work as pinsetters or pinboys (or my favourite, pin monkeys) to return the pins to their normal position.

This isn't a picture of a bowling alley.  Unless the bowling alley has pins shaped like unicorns.

So, why are bowling alleys still a bit rubbish?  Bowling is great fun, but I can only ever recall perhaps one time that I've gone bowling and the lane hasn't at some point broken down, requiring someone to come and fix it.  Sure, I get that mechanical stuff has a shelf life and I'm sure bowling alley machines get some beatings from people bowling at the wrong times, but still, they seem to break down a lot.

Apart from bowling, I've been doing stuff in relation to my manly challenges - I can't blog about them because all the material will be going into a book, but let me say that in just the last week I've been worried, injured, excited, wobbling, bleeding, deafened, and fearing for my life.  I can't wait for the next 3-4 months to happen.

Happy holidays!

Hello!

Well wherever you are in the world, I hope you had a good Christmas / holiday period.  It's been fairly quiet at mine with lots of unhealthy food, movies, and the odd nap.  I am working my way through Bill Bryson's latest book (The Road to Little Dribbling) and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it, I'm going to be sad when I finish it and I won't have any more of his travel books to read for the first time.  I think Bryson's appeal is in that he is so easy to relate to - I can quite imagine having similar challenges and misadventures if I had the opportunity to travel to new places under my own steam without my wife's steer or the enforced sensibilities of travelling with a family.  (That gives me an idea for a future blog, actually)

I'm very pleased to have done a little bit of DIY to my Sennheiser PC 350 headset that I won several years ago (for the story - and video - click here) - the ear cushions, over the years, have become flatter and flatter until they don't really resemble padding any more and rather just appear to be two plastic ovals with a bit of black fabric hanging off them.

I was expecting them to require superglue or at the very least a screwdriver with an unusual head (to make it more difficult) so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they snap out of place and then the replacements snap into place, and voila, the headset now has lovely thick cushions to envelop my ears during those long gaming sessions.

Today I think it's going to be a slightly busier day as I really need to get some washing done (with the aid of my evil tumble dryer - do anticipate a future blog post on this subject) and perhaps even think about vacuuming.

How has your Christmas been?  Are you still off or back at work?  Let me know in the comments!

The launch of "The Worlds Funniest Status Updates In The World - Ever!"

Pic courtesy of Geralt at pixabay.com via a CC 0 Public Domain License

I was on a train today, and as usual when I'm on a train I did a little bit of thinking.

It was actually sparked off by a meeting I went to a few weeks back, where we were talking about Gamification.  Gamification is the art of using gaming techniques to improve performance in business - as an example, in a computer game you may get a reward of some sort (for example an achievement, or better equipment) for completing a particular objective.  Whilst the objective may be difficult to achieve, or even boring, the player is spurred on by the game.  And gamification looks to apply this theory to work.

One of the people at the meeting mentioned about how essentially we have "gamified" our social media channels - when we put things on Facebook, or Twitter, why have we done it?  In many cases, because we want those Likes or Favourites or Retweets or whatever to show that we are popular/funny aka successful.

Of course, the difficulty that occurs all too often is that you can't think of anything interesting to put on Facebook!

So, I had an idea for a book of funny, weird, interesting etc status updates that people could read to enjoy and maybe even to give them ideas for their own status updates.

I'm going to work on writing some up, but there's also an opportunity for you to get involved - maybe you have an idea for a status update to go in the book!

If you would like to submit an update to go in the book, head over to http://thoggy.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-worlds-funniest-social-updates-in.html and fill in the form.  Please read the terms & conditions.  If you're not happy with the Ts & Cs, don't submit anything!  But what I'd like to do is for everyone that gets a status update in the final book (or whatever it is - maybe an eBook, maybe it'll just be a blog post if I can't make enough of them) is put their name in the book, and a link to their blog/website/Twitter.

I'm sure as the days go on the idea will get refined/improved/binned so also feel free to comment or get in touch with your thoughts and ideas!

I look forward to hearing from you!